In a judgment released last July in Smith v. Inco. the Ontario Superior Court recently decided Ontario’s first-ever environmental tort class action judgment by awarding an estimated $36 million to ... [more] Full article

Courts in two Canadian cases have recently made it easier to certify direct and indirect-purchaser class actions seeking damages for alleged price fixing. Formerly, the difficulty of proving damages suffered ... [more] Full article

In two recent decisions, the Ontario Superior Court and the British Columbia Court of Appeal relied on the aggregate damages provisions of the Class Proceedings Act in their respective provinces to certify class actions seeking damages for alleged conspiracies to fix prices for hydrogen peroxide and DRAM memory chips. In doing this, both courts side-stepped the requirement in the aggregate damages provisions that liability must be proved before damages can be assessed in the aggregate. A close examination of the decisions suggests, however, that the courts have in effect done away with this statutory requirement. [more] Full article

Many Canadian class actions alleging price fixing conspiracies are run parallel to similar US class actions. As a result, this handbook will be useful to Canadian lawyers seeking to understand how the US class action system deals with issues surrounding indirect purchasers. [more] Full article